OUR TEAM

Legal tech and funding

adClaim is a German legal service provider and funder which successfully and efficiently enforces damages claims both in and out of court on behalf of injured companies. We use innovative legal technologies to provide a simple and cost-efficient process for the injured parties. Especially in complex cases with high-frequency transactions, the data gathering, cleansing and processing is key to efficiently enforce damages claims. We have proven our competence in this field in numerous proceedings and successfully processed large amounts of data and documents for thousands of companies in various languages. In addition, as a funder, we bear the litigation costs in order to enable injured parties to pursue their claims without any cost risk.

The law firm

More than any other law firm, Hausfeld Rechtsanwälte LLP has influenced the development of competition law in digital markets and the judicial enforcement of antitrust damages in Germany, the EU and the US. Hausfeld has decades of experience in those areas and has successfully represented small, medium-sized and large companies.

Juv 2022 Awards Kanzlei des Jahres für Antitrust-Recht

Hausfeld has won several awards for its innovative cooperations with legal tech firms in complex antitrust cases which are often the only effective means for injured parties to enforce their claims. No matter which case - Amazon, Google, Meta or Apple - Hausfeld defends the interests of companies and their associations that have been harmed in competition by pursuing abuse complaints and lawsuits, and represents entire industries. No other law firm in Europe represents as many injured parties in abuse of dominance proceedings against Google.
"No one challenges the market power of digital corporations as consistently as Hausfeld." (JUVE Verlag, JUVE Awards 2022, 27.10.2022).

The Hausfeld litigation team will be led by Google-expert Prof Dr Thomas Höppner (Partner) and litigator Dr Ann-Christin Richter (Deputy Managing Partner).

Thomas Höppner is an expert for competition in digital markets and represents several leading associations in the media and advertising sector, including the German Newspaper Publishers and Digitalpublishers Association (BDZV), the German Free Press Media Association (MVFP, formerly VDZ) and the Corint Media GmbH, in proceedings before the German Federal Cartel Office (Google News Showcase, Apple ATT) as well as the European Commission (Google Shopping, Android, Ad Tech) and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (Google Privacy Sandbox). He is seen as a leader in particular in the fields of self-preferencing and competition in online advertising markets and, amongst others, authored the book “Digital Advertising and the Google Ecosystem”.

Ann-Christin Richter specialises in representing clients in antitrust damages actions. She enforces damages claims worth several billion euros on behalf of thousands of injured companies and represents well-known corporations in various individual proceedings. Ann-Christin also focuses on advising on abuse of dominance cases. Among other cases, she obtained the world's first binding civil judgements against Google for NetDoktor, a subsidiary of Hubert Burda Holding, for displaying search results in violation of antitrust law. She also has many years of experience in defending clients in cartel investigations by competition authorities and in conducting internal investigations.

Economic expertise

Our team is completed by the economic expert Prof. Dr. Roman Inderst and the marketing expert Prof. Dr. Bernd Skiera from the Goethe University in Frankfurt who both already successfully cooperate with Hausfeld in other important proceedings. For example, Roman Inderst and his team at RCS-Research and Consulting Services GmbH support Hausfeld in enforcing damages claims worth several billion euros on behalf of thousands of companies.

Roman Inderst is one of the most prominent competition damages experts in Europe. He and his team at RCS GmbH regularly advise companies, associations and government agencies in the fields of competition economics, regulation and cartel damages. RCS has provided economic assessments in high-profile cartel damage cases across various industries, e.g., in online retailing, manufacturing, drugstores, payment systems or the sugar industry. Roman Inderst has also been appointed by German courts in cartel damage cases as an independent economic expert to evaluate the amount of damages.
Roman Inderst regularly publishes in top-tier journals, such as the Journal of Finance and the Review of Economic Studies. Before his professorship at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, he held a professorship at the London School of Economics. He is also a member of various Academic Advisory Councils, such as the Board of Academic Advisers to the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action. Recognised by the Handelsblatt Ranking, Roman Inderst is one of the leading German speaking professors of economics in terms of the quality and quantity of publications. Among other things, he is the authour of the standard works on the quantification of antitrust damages.

Bernd Skiera has held a professorship at the Goethe University in Frankfurt for more than 20 years. With a research focus on marketing analytics, online marketing (in particular, programmatic, RTB and price management), data driven marketing, MarTech and SalesTech, Bernd Skiera perfectly complements the economic expertise of Roman Inderst as a renowned expert in the AdTech sector. Already in 2005, he started to analyse the AdTech market, first focusing on Google Adwords, followed by online ad exchanges. He collaborated intensively with the European Ad Exchange, thereby gaining access to a proprietary and massive set of “cookie data” from around 500 publishers and more than 800 advertisers.
Bernd Skiera closely cooperates with various research institutes and is a member of the board of the EFL Data Science Institute and the Schmalenbach Gesellschaft. In the latest Handelsblatt business economist ranking, he was ranked number 1 of the top 100 in the field of “aktuelle Forschungsleistung” (current research performance). He regularly receives important research awards, e.g., the award by the European Research Council (“ERC Advanced Grant”). Bernd Skiera regularly publishes in top-tier journals, such as Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Research, covering all types of research questions ranging from the adoption of ad blockers to the value of targeting based on third party data in online advertising.